Archive for the 'Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

On Thursday, midway through Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' magical show – that sounds hyperbolic, but there’s really no other way to sum up this spectacle – frontman Alex Ebert gazed at the audience surrounding him in a custom 360-degree circus tent set up at Los Angeles State Historical Park. “It's a dream … right?”

It certainly seemed that way. The ever-expanding band, now a veteran of the local scene and trailblazer for other neo-folk outfits like the Lumineers, have always had a hard time connecting at headlining shows the way it does at one-off festival experiences. They have finally figured out the secret, though it's going to be a tough one to replicate.

For this small series of shows – continuing all weekend, with a noon matinee on Sunday – they've concocted a full-blown circus, complete with fortune tellers, a Ferris wheel, a midway and various side stages. The entire thing, minus the headlining tent, is free to the public.

That buildup – which Thursday included sideshow displays from death-defying balance artists, a standup comedian and a tumbling routine fresh out of America's Got Talent – is the perfect way for audiences to get in the right state of mind for the Magnetic Zeros’ messianic, anything-goes brand of music. Add to that an intimacy only attainable through this kind of unique staging – which put Ebert no more than 50 feet away from fans, with ample room to commiserate – and the show felt more like a happening than a concert. No question that was the intent.

Usually Jack FM stages its annual retro shindig at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine. Not this time. The 2013 edition, dubbed “Flashback Jack,” is moving indoors and into a smaller configuration, taking over the Theatre at Honda Center (the arena’s half-house setup) on Sept. 21.

What’s more, organizers have focused their lineup more tightly than usual, unearthing a bill that might have played a place three times as large back in ’83: Blondie, Rick Springfield, Adam Ant, the Psychedelic Furs, the Fixx, Berlin and, the only rap act on the roster, the Sugarhill Gang. Tickets, $36-$101, go on sale Friday, Aug. 9, at 10 a.m.

Big Top: If you read our review earlier this week of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ Hollywood Bowl show, then you’re at least aware that the L.A. gang of sunny eccentrics will create and curate “a new and distinctive circus experience” in the round and under a traditional tent at L.A. State Historic Park for four nights, Oct. 17-20.

The final date, in fact, will feature two performances, a matinee for families followed by an evening set. Also promised is a farmer’s market, plus beer gardens, late-night happenings, vaudeville comedy, acrobats – and presumably another band or three. Tickets, $60, are on sale Friday at 10 a.m.

I had a slightly queasy feeling during Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' show at the Hollywood Bowl Sunday night, the next installment in KCRW's annual World Festival series.

For all their strenuous insistence of sincerity, the music feels almost engineered, oddly forced and inorganic despite the good vibes emanating from the stage. It's as if someone took all the strains currently popular among the urban bourgeoisie and mixed them together into a handcrafted cocktail. Fans might complain that I haven't drunk the band's Kool-Aid, but before they do, they might want to Google the derivation of that phrase.

The L.A. band-cum-collective (a dozen musicians were listed in the program but there seemed to be more on stage) is almost relentlessly sunny, like a street-corner proselytizer. As on their three albums, including a just-released self-titled effort, they're also very much a reflection of the city they call home.

The music they make sprawls, but this isn't a band that takes freeways. They hit the surface streets, riding through different neighborhoods: some lovely and lushly landscaped, parked on hillsides with breathtaking vistas; others dun and flat over-baked, mile after mile of repeating plain warehouses. But their emotional temperature remains almost constant, inching up or down only a few degrees, as if moving through California's microclimates and seasons.

Alex Ebert playing in the sunshine at Doheny Days last September. Photo: David Hall, for the Register.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros: Just a couple weeks ago the Hollywood Bowl announced much of its 2013 season, albeit with a few holes remaining to be plugged, particularly with regard to KCRW's monthly World Festival installments. One of those vacancies just got filled: the Aug. 4 show featuring the Sun Ra Arkestra and Oliver Mtukudzi just gained the Magnetic Zeros as headliner.

Also, singer-songwriter Matthew E. White has been added to the She & Him/Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell evening on June 23. Tickets are currently only available as part of subscriber packages. Single tickets become available in early May.

Bruno Mars: Last week he announced his Moonshine Jungle World Tour by revealing only the markets he will play. This week he has attached dates and venues, and they're exactly the places we suspected: Staples Center on July 27, San Diego's Valley View Casino Center on July 30 and Las Vegas' MGM Grand Garden Arena on Aug. 3.

September 10th, 2012, 2:20 pm by BEN WENER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Wayne Coyne, left, and the Flaming Lips kick off their Doheny Days finale with a colorful burst of confetti. Photo: David Hall, for the Register. Click the pic for more.

All afternoon at the second half of this past weekend's Doheny Days festival it seemed the talent on display had just stumbled in from the shore after some bewildering journey, unsure where they had landed.

“Sorry, just woke up, just woke up,” Alex Ebert warned the crowd as those loveable L.A. ragamuffins Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes ambled on stage in typically out of-it fashion, like someone just evicted Dylan's '75 Rolling Thunder Revue from a squatter's commune.

Then there was David Hinds, leader of veteran English reggae band Steel Pulse, the only import in this otherwise heavily West Coast lineup. He was even more disoriented: “I don't even know where I am. All I know is we are somewhere between San Diego and Los Angeles.”

He quickly led his group into “I Can't Stand It,” a hearty bouncer from the soundtrack to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing – the “it” in question being “the heat,” of which there was plenty Sunday afternoon in Dana Point. The sun occasionally ducked behind spotty cloud covering that only added humidity and a few weird raindrops to an otherwise sweaty atmosphere that didn't stop baking until nightfall.

The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne gets obscured by giant balloons and confetti at a June performance in New Orleans. Photo: Rick Diamond, Getty Images

You can always rely on those loveable, self-described fearless freaks the Flaming Lips to return to Southern California just about every other year.

Last summer, in fact, the Oklahoma City group staged two highly memorable shows near here, performing first its 1999 breakthrough The Soft Bulletin and then their faithful-yet-radical 2009 rethinking of Pink Floyd's 1973 head-trip masterpiece The Dark Side of the Moon across back-to-back nights at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The Lips are almost always at their best – wildest and woolliest – during such special occasions.

Yet it's very rare that they come to Orange County. Even Steven Drozd, multi-instrumentalist for the uniquely influential psych-rock band, who insists he's “usually really good about what places we've played and what years,” can't quite pinpoint when or where in O.C. the Lips have appeared.

“I'll have to do a little investigating on the Google machine,” he admitted during an early-morning phone chat two weeks ago. “I remember we played … Long Beach is Orange County, right?”

OK ... that's it ... I give ... I've had enough. I need more rest if I'm ever gonna be ready for Stagecoach.

This, my annual Kill List of the best of the fest, was supposed to be yet another slide show for your perusal, like last year's. But I'm just too fried to write another word about Coachella … apart from these, that is.

You can read more here about my assessment of this year's often fantastic, sometimes controversial festival. But for the sake of, I dunno, tradition, I thought I'd at least share what the rundown would have been, were I not way overdue with it and feeling under the weather.

The real story about the 11th annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival isn't the crush of humanity that invaded the gates all at once Friday afternoon, leading to interminable lines, missed opportunities, near-riot conditions and very, very angry Coachellans.

I have little sympathy. It was a three-day fest, folks, with no single-day tickets to speak of -- meaning it would be more of a camping festival than ever before. You should've known months ago to arrive as early as possible, lest you wind up in the pile of 75,000 people all needing to be processed for entry (plus several thousand more hoping to score miracle tickets, and plenty beyond that who just decided to crash the party).

I've never been to a Coachella where I didn't get stuck in some inexplicable delay -- this time it was getting out of parking, and VIP no less. That Friday mess sounds worse than any wait that has ever occurred out in Indio. But it passed -- and come Saturday and Sunday, it was a breeze to get in. Show up sooner and stop complaining.

The real story about this year's often magnificent (but was it really the best?) Coachella also isn't this still-debated issue about the death of single-day passes.

Again, I have little sympathy. “I'd have really liked to have gone just to see Muse,” one reader wrote to me. Fine, then wait till Matt and the lads return on their own tour and see them then. And here are the dates: Sept. 23 at Honda Center, Sept. 25 at Staples Center.

April 17th, 2010, 7:03 pm by KEVIN FLINN, FOR THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

As Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros took the stage, singer/ringleader Alex Ebert (pictured above) inadvertently kicked over his mic stand, causing it to fall from the stage and strike a photographer in the forehead, drawing twin tickles of blood down the photog's forehead.

Ebert immediately leaped into the pit and stripped off his white T-shirt, wrapping it around the photographer's head as a bandage. While the photo pit was at its most dangerous, it also surged with raw, unabated energy when Ebert & Co. were on stage.

Desert Jeff and I bicker passionately but pointlessly over a great many trivial matters.

For the better part of a month, for instance, the battleground has been whether Pavement will go over huge at Coachella. Jeff, the much bigger fan, has been figuring a Pixies-size draw. I'm betting half that, more like 2005's Gang of Four crowd ... and, as with that set, half will walk away bored after three or four songs.

I think he's coming around to my way of thinking on that one. But we have never been more at odds than we are over the issue of no single-day tickets at Coachella this year. ("As of this moment," adds the hopeful reader.)